When you kill a woman, you kill all of her babies, and when you wound a woman in many ways you kill all of her babies. When you kill a man, you kill just that man.
This is the philosophical foundation for keeping woman out of contact with an enemy. 
Posted on 11/05/2003 9:51:58 PM PST by saquin
BY PAUL D. COLFORD AND CORKY SIEMASZKO New York Daily News
NEW YORK - (KRT) - Jessica Lynch was brutally raped by her Iraqi captors.
That is the shocking revelation in "I Am a Soldier, Too," the much-anticipated authorized biography of the former POW. A copy of the book was obtained by The New York Daily News on Wednesday.
Best selling author Rick Bragg tells Lynch's story for her, often using her own words. Thankfully, she has no memory of the rape.
"Jessi lost three hours," Bragg wrote. "She lost them in the snapping bones, in the crash of the Humvee, in the torment her enemies inflicted on her after she was pulled from it."
The scars on Lynch's battered body and the medical records indicate she was anally raped, and "fill in the blanks of what Jessi lived through on the morning of March 23, 2003," Bragg wrote.
"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead."
The 207-page saga published by Knopf hits bookstores Tuesday, which is Veterans Day.
In it, America's most famous G.I. - for the first time since her dramatic rescue on April 1 - dispels some of the mystery surrounding the blistering battle that resulted in her capture, her treatment by the Iraqis in a hellish hospital, and the searing pain that is her constant companion.
A 20-year-old from the hollers of West Virginia, Lynch knew what could happen to her if she fell into Iraqi hands. A female pilot captured in the Persian Gulf War had been raped.
"Everyone knew what Saddam's soldiers did to women captives," Bragg wrote. "In (Lynch's) worst nightmares, she stood alone in that desert as the trucks of her own army pulled away."
The nightmare became real in the dusty and dangerous city of Nassiriyah, when Lynch's unit got separated from its convoy and was ambushed by Iraqi fighters.
Bragg, a former New York Times reporter who quit after admitting he had a legman do some of his reporting, gives a cinematic account of the desperate firefight that mortally wounded Lynch's Army buddy, Lori Piestewa, and 10 others in the convoy.
But while early Pentagon reports suggested the young Army private heroically resisted capture, Lynch told Bragg she never fired a shot, because her M-16 jammed. "I didn't kill nobody," she said.
Lynch also denied in the book claims by Iraqi lawyer Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, who said he saw one of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's black-clad Fedayeen slap her as she lay in her hospital bed.
"Unless they hit me while I was asleep - and why do that?" she said.
Lynch described to Bragg how Iraqi doctors were branded "traitors" by Saddam's henchmen for helping her and how they tried to treat her wounds in a shattered hospital where painkillers were scarce. She said one nurse tried to ease her agony by singing to her.
"It was a pretty song," she said. "And I would sleep."
Lynch also confirmed reports in the book that Iraqi doctors tried to sneak her to safety in an ambulance but turned back when wary U.S. soldiers opened fire on them.
But eight days after she was captured, Lynch found herself face to face with a savior.
"Jessica Lynch," he said, "we're United States soldiers and we're here to protect you and take you home."
"I'm an American soldier, too," Lynch replied.
Lynch's painful recovery from an ordeal that left her barely able to walk, unable to use her right hand or control her bowels is vividly described. So, too, is Lynch's discomfort with the spotlight - and with being called a hero.
"I'm just a survivor," she said in the book. "When I think about it, it keeps me awake at night."
---
© 2003, New York Daily News.
Tens of millions maybe.
How much money is spent on "preparation and weapons"?
Each dollar taken from the front increases the odds of a casualty. Million-dollar Nascar races are decided by a $1 valve stem sometimes.
What, specifically are you talking aobut when you speak of those two things?
Maybe they could use a new simulator, maybe they could use more live round fire. Perhaps these budgets would be cut if tens of millions more would have to be spent on recruitment.
These things you have to answer before you can evaluate a difference as "big".
I think little differences are big when our soldier's lives depend on these things.
I asked, "If all of those 100,000 women were in jobs that allow direct contact with the enemy, then how does that free up men.
Apparently there isn't close contact with the enemy if it only happens every twelve years. Women stateside had more contact with the enemy than military women.
For closer contact with the eneny? Evidently, the job Miss Lynch, as an example, couldn't get more into contact with the enemy."
Yep, but the freqency is only once every twelve years.
You are saying that one instance of a woman contacting the enemy 12 years ago and one now. Support your answer with logic or cites. What was the "one" instance 12 years ago?
Whoever it was that got sexually molested. Starts with a C. Free Republic wasn't around then where the unsavory elements of the right could attack her like they do with Lynch so I don't know her exact name. Cournan?
Cite the number of women doing putton pushing jobs that are not in the tradition area of women's service.
100,000 was my number, just a guess. What is it?
You've said exactly that three time before. Cite some logical or statistical support for it.
I can't put it any plainer. If they had plenty of men signing up, they wouldn't have to run several cars in Nascar. Those sponsorships are about $16 million per car.
Please explain your answer.
What's to explain. I think the superiority of our military is based more on it's structure than it's scenery.
I said that in my experience during 13 months in Viet Nam, in actual combat, that the draftees did as good a job as the volunteers. I was a volunteer. Let me be more precise. Every single draftee, without exception, I served with did as good as his counterpart volunteer.
Your sample size is pretty small. Many higher-ups have said that they prefer an all-volunteer force.
Please cite your experience, examples or statistics that makes you think draftees do a worse job in combat and that leads to more casualties.
I've said several times that I haven't served. Higher-ups that I have philosophical agreement with have said they prefer an all-volunteer force. It's logical to me. I'd rather be serving with a guy that volunteered for the cause rather than a guy that may not believe in the cause or who may even loathe the military.
Have you ever served in combat with draftees?
Nope. But I've heard what higher-ups have said and they say an all-volunteer force is better. It makes logical sense to me.
You're telling me that if a conflict happens less than so many times, it can't be called "combat"?
Yeah, they may see combat, but the odds are pretty low.
I asked, "What is our military's record now as opposed to before the Clinton administration?"
They set a record for advancing across enemy territory.
Cite the record for advancement.
Their push through Iraq.
But you have cited no logic or data that supports your theory.
My posts have been all logic and theory.
The 12 year thing is as close to it as you come.
That's not logic or theory, that's data.
That is how long it was between the first Gulf war and this one. No.
It's data, not logic or theory.
You have not run through any logical sequence that lead to your conclusions.
Most of my posts have been logic and theory.
Do you know what logic is? It is a line of reasoning from known facts to reasonable conjecture.
Yep. It's a fact that there are women in the military. It's data that women were confronted by the enemy only twice in 12 years. From those we can apply logic and come up with theories.
I may have indeed started the discussion with you. This means you don't have to support your conclusions?
I am through logic and theory.
The rest of this post is essentially the same statement over and over again.
Your questions are repeating over and over.
As I said before, I ask questions and you repeat yourself.
You repeat the same questions.
My first line in the post to which you are answering was, "You are repeating. I'm asking questions and you're not answering, so I repeat the question." You split the statement to avoid to the implication.
Who did what with where? lol What was that again?
Thanks for your participation. I'm through. I think any here that may have been ambiguous about the principles involved in women in combat roles would see the lack of any substance in your position. That's enough for me.
Fine with me. Everyone has to vote what they think makes sense.
Thanks for your comments!
When you kill a woman, you kill all of her babies, and when you wound a woman in many ways you kill all of her babies. When you kill a man, you kill just that man.
This is the philosophical foundation for keeping woman out of contact with an enemy.
Yes, that is the one thing that I'm surprised none of you have brought up with me: How many more men's lives are worth the life of a woman, assuming my theories are true? A legitimate question. I mean, let's say an evil ruler demanded a sacrifice from a large city he controlled and he gave them a choice: Send out a young man to be sacrificed or send out a young woman. Obviously the American choice would be that a man would be chosen. But then let's say it was either 5 men or one woman. Probably still 5 men would die, even though there would probably start being female volunteers to save the life of the extra men. But then what about 10 to 1, 100 to 1, 1000 to one? I wonder where the cut-off would be.
That's a flat-out lie, and you know it. You've repeated that over and over and you know it's not true. I've shown you it's not true, but you keep making that post because you don't want people to know the truth about Jessica's performance during the ambush on her unit -she failed miserably on every soldierly task she was expected to perform, but she's walking around now with a Bronze Star for heroism on the battlefield. Her heroism story is the BIG LIE that you and other PC feminist want to continue to perpetuate, but that's what feminism and PC thought is all about: it makes you overlook the obvious for the purpose of achieving some dubious political goal, it's a means to an end. But it's end is no different from it' mean -it's all a BIG LIE. The result of years of feminizing the military has resulted in calling a scrawny girl scout a heroic soldier for being a coward. She was a weak link in that unit, and, as fate would have it, her failure out there cost people, real people, their lives. Properly maintaining a vehicle in a combat convoy is a common task that is required by the army. She failed to do this and her failure here led to the deaths of other soldiers. She was ordered to lock and load and prepare to fight when they had to go back through the city to get back on track to their assigned destination, but all she did was bury her head a pray.
You say that I've just been bashing her? Well, now I'm going to point out the obvious here that I'm sure you were hoping I'd overlooked: She says she tried to fire her weapon but it jammed, but she had time to take corrective action to fix her weapon, and there were other weapons in that vehicle she could have used -Piestawa's weapon or the full auto weapon that was sitting next to her (such actions are common tasks expected of REAL SOLDIERS). This ambush lasted up to TWO HOURS! They needed her too. They needed her to perform like a real soldier during this event. They needed her fight, to lay down some fire as the first sergeant repeatedly had to make combat pickups of troops who'd become disengaged from their vehicles. Buggs, Aquiano, and the other soldiers went down fighting; they were not incapacitated -she's likely living today precisely because she didn't fight. Yet you continue to besmirch the lives and memories of these men. You want your lie; you want your FEMALE war hero because all you care about is advancing your feminist agenda, and that's why the medal is so important. You try to play down the awarding of that medal. You say it's trivial and this medal is handed out like candy...that it doesn't mean much, but this too is a lie. That medal does mean something: it does stand as an official recognition of heroism for acts performed in battle and we all know she performed none. So the awarding of that medal to her for her heroism when she performed like a coward has become a symbol of how ingrained feminism has become in our military. This represents a weakened military, and people our waking up to this reality, and you and your feminist "sisthren" can't stop the truth from coming out.
Care to show me where the guys in the Humvee did better? It may come out that they got some shots off but we haven't seen it yet.
You've repeated that over and over and you know it's not true. I've shown you it's not true,...
You've done nothing but make unsubstantiated allegations.
...but you keep making that post because you don't want people to know the truth about Jessica's performance during the ambush on her unit -she failed miserably on every soldierly task she was expected to perform,...
Where's the proof of this?
...but she's walking around now with a Bronze Star for heroism on the battlefield.
Heroism? I thought it was for meritorious service.
Her heroism story is the BIG LIE that you and other PC feminist want to continue to perpetuate,...
I've never claimed her heroism was anything more than going when called and surviving with humbleness.
...but that's what feminism and PC thought is all about: it makes you overlook the obvious for the purpose of achieving some dubious political goal, it's a means to an end. But it's end is no different from it' mean -it's all a BIG LIE. The result of years of feminizing the military has resulted in calling a scrawny girl scout a heroic soldier for being a coward.
Where's the proof of this?
She was a weak link in that unit,...
Proof?
...and, as fate would have it, her failure out there cost people, real people, their lives.
How so? What failure?
Properly maintaining a vehicle in a combat convoy is a common task that is required by the army.
So you believe vehicles never break down in sandy dusty hot conditions? Several vehicles broke down that day, not just hers. And was she chief mechanic for her vehicle?
She failed to do this and her failure here led to the deaths of other soldiers.
Proof?
She was ordered to lock and load and prepare to fight when they had to go back through the city to get back on track to their assigned destination, but all she did was bury her head a pray.
Many weapons jammed that day, plus she had injuries from the wreck.
You say that I've just been bashing her? Well, now I'm going to point out the obvious here that I'm sure you were hoping I'd overlooked: She says she tried to fire her weapon but it jammed, but she had time to take corrective action to fix her weapon, and there were other weapons in that vehicle she could have used -Piestawa's weapon or the full auto weapon that was sitting next to her (such actions are common tasks expected of REAL SOLDIERS).
If she had wreck injuries then she probably couldn't move around very well. Plus I believe it was Miller that said he couldn't get Dowdy's weapon out of the front of the Humvee. Maybe Piestewas was buried also.
This ambush lasted up to TWO HOURS! They needed her too. They needed her to perform like a real soldier during this event. They needed her fight, to lay down some fire as the first sergeant repeatedly had to make combat pickups of troops who'd become disengaged from their vehicles.
If she couldn't move around then she couldn't get a weapon. If by the time she came to that her Humvee was surrounded then maybe she was pinned by enemy fire or the situation was hopeless for to try and get another weapon if she could move at all.
Buggs, Aquiano, and the other soldiers went down fighting;
Where is this in the report?
...they were not incapacitated -she's likely living today precisely because she didn't fight.
Can you show me this in the report?
Yet you continue to besmirch the lives and memories of these men.
Until I see a report saying they killed the enemy, I'm not going to assume they did. Miller thought all were dead when he got to the vehicle.
You want your lie; you want your FEMALE war hero because all you care about is advancing your feminist agenda, and that's why the medal is so important.
I've never claimed she killed Iraqis, and my only point about the medal is that people have gotten them for less since Vietnam.
You try to play down the awarding of that medal. You say it's trivial and this medal is handed out like candy...that it doesn't mean much, but this too is a lie. That medal does mean something: it does stand as an official recognition of heroism for acts performed in battle and we all know she performed none.
No, they've been given out to people who didn't even see battle.
So the awarding of that medal to her for her heroism when she performed like a coward has become a symbol of how ingrained feminism has become in our military.
It was awarded for meritorious service, it didn't have the V device.
This represents a weakened military, and people our waking up to this reality, and you and your feminist "sisthren" can't stop the truth from coming out.
LOL you have your opinion and I have mine. I think having a better choice of men for the front saves lives. I think your points are all driven by hate and it makes you see things that don't exist. None of what you say can be documented in the report.
Where's the proof of this?
Where's the proof of this?
Proof?
Proof?
Where is this in the report?
Can you show me this in the report?
Until I see a report saying they killed the enemy....
LOL you have your opinion and I have mine...None of what you say can be documented in the report.
Here's the link again to the "non-documented" report that I've based my observations on: http://www.army.mil/features/507thMaintCmpy/. I've posted this to you before at your request. I suggest you that you should actually read it before commenting further about what I'm "making up."
If she had wreck injuries then she probably couldn't move around very well. Plus I believe it was Miller that said he couldn't get Dowdy's weapon out of the front of the Humvee. Maybe Piestewas was buried also...
If she couldn't move around then she couldn't get a weapon. If by the time she came to that her Humvee was surrounded then maybe she was pinned by enemy fire or the situation was hopeless for to try and get another weapon if she could move at all...
Remember that report I was telling you about: http://www.army.mil/features/507thMaintCmpy/? If you actually ever decide to read it, you will find that the accident Jessie was involved in occurred at the end of the ambush battle: TWO HOURS after it began. She had her head buried between her knees this whole time while her fellow soldiers were fighting for their lives. She's not a hero. I don't blame her for failing out there. She should have never been put in that situation, and the best we can do now is try to prevent other soldiers from loosing their lives because of weak links like her.
Was she the reason her truck broke down... Hell, at this rate, why don't you just go on and blame her for every breakdown of every vehicle used by the 507th, and every weapons jam, etc. etc.
I don't think she was solely responsible or even primarily responsible what happened to her unit in Nasireyeh during the ambush. I've only commented on her performance in this thread because that's what this thread is about. I am familiar with army common task responsibilities; I know how real soldiers are measured. When given a task, a real soldier is graded on a pass/fail, go/nogo, scale. They either accomplish the task or they fail. Jessica failed to deliver her vehicle to the assigned destination points by allowing it to become disabled. This failure ended up costing people their lives when it prevented Bugggs and Aquiano from being able to turn around and it forced First Sergeant Dowdy to go after them -it's the law of unintended consequences. I don't blame Jessie: I blame the people who put her in that situation. I know many people like yourself have bought into the notion that there are combat and non-combat positions in the army, but this is a lie. Even something as innocuous as driving a truck can have disastrous consequences if not performed to standards. Can't you see how this was nearly impossible for the slight Jessie to do? She was being asked to drive a 5-ton truck for nearly 3 DAYS straight. That's a lot of stress for anybody, but it is especially true for someone of her stature. I want the PC thinking on this subject to end so that we can again strengthen our military.
Yes, and that would be fine if we were talking about mathematics, but since we aren't that statement is along the same totally incoherent lines as all the other "arguments" you have been making so far.
Of course, you were the one who made an issue of power steering-a tacit admission that females would have difficulty controlling a vehicle without it-now you blithely dismiss it because it doesn't support your "theories".
Meanwhile we've had 10,000 incidents in the infantry where there were men pulled to safety a few times in there. More lives were saved by having better men do that due to more choice.
I realize that this is another of your theories, but it is completely baseless, you do realize that when you advance a proposition you are required to provide some support for that "theory" don't you? In fact, you don't have theories, because theories can be disproven through reasoning and evidence.
BTW appending lol to every other statement is not a substitute for making rational arguments.
Congratulations to Kenseth on winning the points championship.
First, I could point out that females are much more likely to miss time due to injury or illness: this link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=97302075 is the abstract of a study of injury rates of men and women in a military training environment. It states Women had 2.5 times the rate of injuries as men and 3.9 times the rate of injuries resulting in hospitalization. Women had significantly more stress fractures and stress reactions than men. The median number of days excused from physical activities for women's injuries was significantly higher than that from men's injuries. This link http://journal.ajsm.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/1/98 noted that In military training, women had a relative injury risk of 9.74 compared with men. And finally, http://occmed.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/52/2/85 points out that There is anecdotal and some scientific evidence that females in military service experience an excess of work-related injuries, compared with males...We found that for all disease and injury categories of medical discharge there is a statistically significant excess in females; this disparity is particularly marked for discharges on account of injury [relative risk (RR) = 1.65, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 1.30–2.10] and musculoskeletal disease (RR = 3.34, 95% CI = 2.75–4.06). Royal Navy females are eight times more likely (RR = 7.92, 95% CI = 3.03–20.66) and Army females seven times more likely (RR = 6.53, 95% CI = 2.60–16.42) than Royal Air Force females to be medically discharged on account of injury. Thus we are losing money due to females missing more time to injury than males.
I could then point out that females are 100% more likely to miss time due to pregnancy. This article, http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1993/vo09no03/vo09no03_women_combat.htm notes that • According to the Roper Poll of the Military, "56 percent of those who were deployed in Desert Shield/Desert Storm with mixed gender units reported that women in their unit became pregnant just prior to or while deployed in the Gulf." Forty-six percent of that group reported that pregnancies had a negative impact on unit readiness, and 59 percent reported a negative impact on morale...Nondeployability briefings before the Commission showed that women were three times more nondeployable than men, primarily due to pregnancy, during Operations Desert Shield and Storm ... That same article points out that 43% of women who joined the Army in 1995 did not complete their enlistment contracts (the overall rate is 30%, meaning that it is somewhere around 24-25% for males, thus females are about 180% more likely not to complete a tour of duty). The article further notes Every recruit who leaves early must be replaced early, in effect doubling the $35,000 it costs to recruit and train each of our soldiers.
Of course none of this takes into account the extra money needed to refit ships to accomodate females, the fact that one study found that 45% of military females could not throw a hand grenade outside of its blast radius (in effect they couldn't throw it far enough not to be hit by its own explosion) or the fact that it is marginally more expensive to outfit and equip a female than it is a male (think clothing and feminine hygeine products).
I'm sure that you'll try to dream up some vague conjecture to try and counter what I've said here, but facts remain stubborn things-and much better basis for decision making than "theories".
You get all high and mighty on my criticism yet your comments drip of genuine hatred all because we have a different opinion.
I don't retract s single thing I've said about her. I still view her the same and include you under the same umbrella.
What I truly found humorous was the "Moderator" cutting in concerned about the word "*itch". As if this was "abuse" or "profanity". It's not. In fact, when ole Hillary was in the headlines more, a newcomer might think that was her name! It was used so often that even I tired of it. I call that selective hypocrisy. I;d bet you are guilty of the same or worse.
My suggestion to you is "get a life". I don't kow of anyone that thinks much of little girl. Defend her till your blue in the face. Doesn't matter to me at all.
Buggs and Aquino were with her the whole time, why didn't they do anything then? Miller fought after the Lynch Humvee crashed, why didn't he do anything before that? Your logic is senseless.
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